Kent wants lie detector tests to be admissible in his trial

Federal judge accused of abusive sexual conduct

LISE OLSEN, Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

Published 6:30 am, Thursday, December 11, 2008

U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent, charged with abusive sexual contact of a court employee, argued Wednesday for the right to introduce polygraph evidence his lawyer hopes will help prove Kent's innocence.

Kent passed two separate lie detector tests, according to his attorney, in which he denied having unwanted sexual encounters with his former case manager, who accused him of molesting her in two incidents in 2003 and 2007.

John Swartz, the Houston polygraph operator who examined Kent, testified in federal court Wednesday that the judge appeared credible when he asked very specific questions about Kent's alleged intimate touching of his case manager.

The judge also claimed that he suffered from an erectile disfunction and therefore would not have pushed his employee's head toward his groin as she alleges, Swartz told the court.

But during an hour of questioning from Peter Ainsworth, the Department of Justice's lead prosecutor on the Kent case, Swartz admitted to failing his own lie detector test when he applied for an FBI job in 2007, as well as making numerous errors in a report about Kent's test submitted to prosecutors.

Polygraph evidence is almost never permitted in federal criminal cases and prosecutors are fighting to exclude it.

Kent, 59, served for years as the lone federal judge in Galveston but was reassigned to Houston last year after being formally reprimanded by the 5th Circuit judicial council in response to a judicial misconduct complaint filed by Cathy McBroom, his former case manager.

In August, Kent was charged with two counts of abusive sexual contact and one count of aggravated attempted sexual abuse in connection with two separate incidents involving McBroom.

U.S. Senior Judge Roger Vinson will hear additional testimony today from a government expert. Vinson will then decide whether any of the polygraph evidence can be used at trial.

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